Favorite photos of 2017: Grit, drama and adorable animals

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Seven-year-old Maryam shows her father her missing teeth over video chat inside the apartment she shares with her mother and sister on Feb 1, 2017. Hasanain Mohammed was set to arrive in Minnesota two days after President Trump signed an order temporarily banning travelers from seven countries, including Iraq. Hasanain was stopped at the Baghdad airport by security guards who checked his ticket, so he was back home in Karbala, talking to his family over the phone. He was later reunited with his family.

Evan Frost | MPR News

It's an end of the year ritual in newsrooms, when choosing the best photographs of the year becomes an annual debate. Are these the most important images of the year? The most beautiful? The most representative of our state? Are we choosing the pictures of the year, or is this the year in pictures?

Our unscientific process this time around involved having staff and freelance photographers submit their personal favorites, asking reporters and editors in the newsroom to suggest the ones they found memorable, then having a group people who love photography weigh in on the more than 125 suggestions. Finally, it comes down to me, as the editor for visuals, to balance sad and happy, protests and progress, cute animals and stories of substance.

So, without further ado, we present photos we really, really liked from this year, and hope that you'll enjoy them, too.

Having learned online that a great gray owl was in a location north of Two Harbors, Minn., a group of photographers gather on the morning of Feb. 28, 2017, to search and wait. They're rewarded when the "Phantom of the North" flies to within 20 yards and rests on a highway sign.
While these photographers relied on patience, the controversial practice of luring owls with mice to photograph them in action came to a head in northeast Minnesota this winter, leading to angry confrontations over ethics and animal welfare.

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Evan Frost | MPR News

Seven-year-old Maryam shows her father her missing teeth over video chat inside the apartment she shares with her mother and sister on Feb 1, 2017. Hasanain Mohammed was set to arrive in Minnesota two days after President Trump signed an order temporarily banning travelers from seven countries, including Iraq. Hasanain was stopped at the Baghdad airport by security guards who checked his ticket, so he was back home in Karbala, talking to his family over the phone. He was later reunited with his family.

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Evan Frost | MPR News

Demonstrators raise their hands in the air during a moment of silence at the Women's March in St. Paul on Jan. 21, 2017. Around the state and the region, in large cities and tiny towns, people gathered to march in support of women's rights and to protest President Donald Trump's policies.